From Boone, North Caroline, comes this one-man project band that carries the name Coils of the Serpent. C.o.t.S. is the creation of a guy named Luke, in which he plays all the instruments by himself. In the same breath, I also gotta say that I´ve always been relatively skeptical about these one-man project bands simply because it´s simply pretty hard to deliver each separate instrument properly enough, and yet try to put all these pieces together to have a decent sounding song for the best final result.

To this Luke dude´s credit, I have to admit that he has put his puzzle together quite carefully, in which the grimness of black/dark metal has quite nicely been coated with some great, intriguing melodies - reminding of something that for example Moonspell have sowed around on their albums before. Luke counts on a mid-paced formula of both black and dark metal, letting the songs flow by their own weight, without forcing pieces of his songs together too much - and therefore the whole outcome sounds quite natural and just thoroughly somewhat enjoyable even.

As far as his vocal parts are concerned, due to having them distorted on the demo quite a bit, Luke sounds a bit like Mike Browning (ex-Nocturnus, ex-Morbid Angel, etc.) on After Death´s demos - sounding inhuman, evil and in a good way deranged even. Luke´s vocalism actually creates a really nice evil vibe over the songs on this demo, so hopefully he´ll stick to this particular vocal style in question on his future efforts as well. There are some keyboard parts in his songs too, but they are not there all the time, and he avoids overrunning all the space from the other instruments and overall dominating the final result too much. “Altar of Contempt” - while being the catchiest song off MONOLITH in my opinion, is a fine example of wise and careful use of the keyboards, in which they are kept to a minimum just to create a thicker wall of atmosphere for the song.

MONOLITH isn´t as bad as I originally thought it might have turned out to be as for a one-man project band. In fact, MONOLITH has been put together even surprisingly well, and Luke himself surely can be a bit proud of his efforts this demo.

Track Listing

01. The Smoldering Embers of All Hope
02. Madness Blooms in the Gardens of Sorrow
03. Altar of Contempt
04. Monolith
05. Daemoneity
06. Win This War for Me